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What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?


Larry

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Hardware, software, a PC something or other to help you use your Atari. What have you found recently that piqued your Atari interest? (Note: it may not be new overall, but new to you.) Why? It may be unknown to some other user, so helpful in that regard.

 

For me, several things:

 

ATADIM.EXE (Winapp) which shows the contents of an ATR that is in Dos 2/MyDos format. Really handy -- drag the ATR to it on your Win desktop, and bingo! -- there are the contents listed.

 

MAKEATR makes it easier to send those stand-alone files over to the Atari. Even easier (usually) that using the APE PC Mirror.

 

A new directory lister for MyDos and SDX disks/images. Makes it easier to be organized and find individual files. Perhaps the author may post it? It's very nice.

 

-Larry

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I've always had a genuine fond for Atari. And that goes back to my days in the late 80's as a kid. And playing many of the old games on my Light Sixer system. It wasn't until the late 90's that I started getting into collecting video games. And as I got in my 20's I started appreciating it even more. Then when I joined atariage in my early 30's. It is a video game company that you always remember the nostalgia plus sharing memories and even debating with fellow members. And also I enjoy youngsters even in their teens getting into Atari. It shows true appreciation to the video game company that was the first to hit it big and not be boasting about the PS4 and Xbox One.

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For me the turn around point of enjoying new stuff for the Atari was when I realized that I could format and Fdisk a CF card for use with MyDos and SpartaDos 33a using the Ultimate Side2 upgrades and moving away from the MyIDE (Mr. Atari) version of having a cartridge driven hard drive..

 

Thanks go out to Jon--(fjc).

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 years later...

I've been reading the Busby thread over in the Jaguar forums and went on eBay and picked up a copy for the Jag.

 

Not sure you've told me, but how did you like it?

 

And since the above was posted I did make a graphical hack of Fast Eddie to Bubsy for the Atari 800 (and 2600, 5200, Vic 20, and Commodore 64) :D

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For me, it's easy, SIO2SD. Like the M1 Garand, the single best implement ever devised for Atari retro computing. Every piece of Atari software you need at your fingertips in a package the size of a pack of cigarettes. To "steal" from Steve Jobs, the SIO2SD is insanely great!

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Well, discovering the near-magical utitlity of an Ultimate 1MB board, especially combined with an IDE hard disk, and SpartaDOS X, all developed in the intervening years after I had set aside my Atari stuff for over a decade … That's gotta be the near-perfect revelation for me in modern years.

 

Plus it's amazing that cool new hardware and software hacks like this are still being developed, melding our beloved vintage hardware with cheap, powerful modern electronics to make magic. Just in the last couple weeks I learned of the Arduino-powered SDrive-MAX and have started building one today. And by "building" I mean "plugging the touchscreen into the Arduino and running an easy-as-pie script to install the software." It's literally that easy. This is $25 worth of parts from Amazon, plus a microSD card (which I still gotta buy another one for this), and then wiring up an SIO cable, which I will do later this week. Fantastic stuff people are still doing! Why more people don't know about this particular project is still a shock to me.

 

post-30400-0-18910100-1531076854_thumb.jpg

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Well, discovering the near-magical utitlity of an Ultimate 1MB board, especially combined with an IDE hard disk, and SpartaDOS X, all developed in the intervening years after I had set aside my Atari stuff for over a decade … That's gotta be the near-perfect revelation for me in modern years.

 

Plus it's amazing that cool new hardware and software hacks like this are still being developed, melding our beloved vintage hardware with cheap, powerful modern electronics to make magic. Just in the last couple weeks I learned of the Arduino-powered SDrive-MAX and have started building one today. And by "building" I mean "plugging the touchscreen into the Arduino and running an easy-as-pie script to install the software." It's literally that easy. This is $25 worth of parts from Amazon, plus a microSD card (which I still gotta buy another one for this), and then wiring up an SIO cable, which I will do later this week. Fantastic stuff people are still doing! Why more people don't know about this particular project is still a shock to me.

 

attachicon.gifIMG_0134.JPG

OK, that I want to build! Where can I find the info? I'd like to install that right in the top of my XL. I never liked any of the SIO2SD's so far because I hated the thought of trying to find a file with a two-line scrolling screen! Yikes! I want a full screen menu, either on the monitor or on a touch-screen like that built into my Atari.

 

Never mind, found the thread and info!

Edited by Gunstar
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OK, that I want to build! Where can I find the info? I'd like to install that right in the top of my XL. I never liked any of the SIO2SD's so far because I hated the thought of trying to find a file with a two-line scrolling screen! Yikes! I want a full screen menu, either on the monitor or on a touch-screen like that built into my Atari.

 

This is, I guess, mostly a German ABBUC thing. I first saw it mentioned in passing in the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation thread, I think by farb. He referred me to another short thread I hadn't noticed before, from back in February.

 

That thread has links to the project page (in German, but if you open it in Chrome, Google does a good job with the translation). The original project used a Linux host machine to program the Arduino. In thread above also has a post by user BigBen with a zip file attached that includes a basic README file in English, along with a Windows batch file that you can run that will program the Arduino for you. So literally, you plug the display board ($16 on Amazon) into the Arduino UNO (or clone - $8.50 on Amazon), plug a USB cable into the Arduino, plug the other end of the cable into your computer, run the batch file and follow the on-screen prompts and done!

 

I'm waiting for another microSD card (I thought I had a spare around here but I don't - I'll get one tonight), and I still need the correct diode to isolate the SIO DATA line (I'll have that Tuesday), then I'll wire up an SIO cable and should be good to go!

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For me it was SIO2SD.

But also, a few years ago, I was lucky and got a new-old-stock bundle comprising of a 1050, 1010, Trak-Ball, Atari 800XL. Upto then, I already had my original A8 XL, 1010, 1050, disks. But all onboxed. I wanted a lovely pristine boxed Atari A8 bundle, and struck lucky.

 

Today, it would be the awesome SD-Max

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Time Pilot! This was one of the games that always should have made it to the 8-bit back in the day, and it's fantastic to see such an excellent port brought out for it now.

 

Also really looking forward to Baby Pac-Man for the 7800. The arcade game was excellent (though never hugely-popular), and I can understand why it also never received a port when the 7800 was current. This version looks to be something that's shaping up to be quite good.

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This is, I guess, mostly a German ABBUC thing. I first saw it mentioned in passing in the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation thread, I think by farb. He referred me to another short thread I hadn't noticed before, from back in... The original project used a Linux

 

Uhhh... How to tell you?

The main discussion is held here:

 

https://www.forum64.de/index.php?thread/78122-projektvorstellung-sdrive-max/

 

It's THE german C64 Forum.

 

Stefan

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Altirra! Eventually, the real hardware will stop working. This is why having emulation that goes back to attempt to as closely as possible emulate the hardware is so critical!

Personally, I don't see myself living long enough to worry about having only emulators (assuming that the same people who make and update emulators will still be around to do it many years in the future-for the latest "PC's" of that day to come), My real Atari has made it 36 years so far, and with my care, hopefully another 30 or until the end of my life, which ever comes first. But my point is, most of us are already 40 or 50 something years old, with probably less days ahead than there are behind us. And after we are gone, I think even emulators will just be museum pieces or a foot-note in history and virtually no one will care after our generation (mostly gen X's) are gone. How many of our generation have hobby pursuits from the generation previous to us? Emulation, just like original hardware, is for here and now, there is no future beyond us; Millennial's will be worried about preserving and emulating machines of their youth, like Xbox's and Playstations, not our crusty old 8-bits. Our generation and hobbies will be forgotten, just like our parent's generation and all the old HAM-radio hobbyists that are dead and gone and the old radio-sets merely museum pieces today, those that have survived.

Edited by Gunstar
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Uhhh... How to tell you?

The main discussion is held here:

 

https://www.forum64.de/index.php?thread/78122-projektvorstellung-sdrive-max/

 

It's THE german C64 Forum.

 

Stefan

Heh. That explains why hardly anyone here (AtariAge) is aware of this cool device: wrong forum (not AtariAge), dedicated to wrong platform (C64 not Atari) and in German to boot! :)

 

Thanks for the link though. It’s been a number of decades since I was growing up with my Swiss grandparents and father, so I doubt my German will be up to it. Maybe Google Translate can help. :P

 

Well, in any case the SDrive-MAX is an easy device to put together, and the code is on Github. I will be putting a cable together this week and seeing how it works in practice.

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